A Step Back in Time: From the pen of lumberman Henry Mantz

September 07, 2012|Submitted by Bill Granlund

I came to this country with my parents from Germany to Milwaukee in 1855 and settled on a small piece of land six miles north of Milwaukee.

My parents were poor, and I was the oldest of five children. When I was 14, I began to support myself and hired out to a tavern with a pay of one dollar a week. I later worked on farms in Wisconsin and Illinois for four years. My next job was in the carpenter trade and then I squared timber for Milwaukee Harbor.

I then moved to Yellow River, 14 miles north of Kilbourn, where I rafted lumber and helped take it down the Mississippi River to St. Louis. I moved farther north and helped raft lumber down to St. Louis.

I next started to work in Michigan at a sawmill for Engleman and later worked in a lumber camp for four years and was paid between $18 and $26 a month.

I was promoted to manager of the camp and did lumbering in Otsego, Cheboygan, Montmorency, Crawford, Oscoda, Roscommon, Kalkaska and Manistee counties.

I continued to work in lumbering for E. M. Salling and Louis Sands in Manistee and Blodgett and Burns in Muskegon, and later, for Salling, Hanson and Co. in Grayling. I next went into lumbering with Louis Jenson in Bagley, Otsego County, for two years.

R. Hanson, L. Jenson and myself organized a new company called the Michelson, Hanson Company, with capital of $150,000 and the following men as officers: N. Michelson, president; L. Jenson, manager and treasurer; and Geo. Alexander, secretary.

I was vice president and manager of the wood department, charged with looking after the logging and estimating the amount of pine and hardwood, as well as locating timber and looking after the 20 miles of logging railroad tracks.

The next step in the business was to buy timber — a sawmill without timber has no value.

I later moved about two miles from the Bagley lumber camp to a point on section 27 in Albert Township in Montmorency County for the purpose of starting lumbering on a larger scale. We built a sawmill on East Twin Lake in the Village of Lewiston.

We started lumbering in 1892 and continued for 17 years. During that time we cut 4.5 million board feet of pine and hardwood. We made good money for all of our stockholders.

I joined the Masonic Order in Grayling in 1886 and was a charter member.

— Bill Granlund is a retired Gaylord High School principal and an Otsego County historian.